MS file compatibility in 4.0+ - comments in .doc

users
#21

Well I think for easier migration it would be nicer to have the best compartibility with MS formats because:

Many companies may have a HUGE amount of documents so it would cost effective to buy a MS licence instead of spending time to convert all these files into odf and free formats.

#22

Hi :slight_smile:
Quite!

Some could view it as a marketing ploy to push people into using their format.  i can image the calls telling users they need to avoid 3rd party formats as though 3rd party is somehow dodgy rather than just meaning that MS can't manage to write code to support their own format let alone other organisations.

However, now they seem to have been pushed into properly supporting the right format rather than just "paying lip service"
Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

#23

Tom Davies wrote:

Some could view it as a marketing ploy to push people into using their
format. i can image the calls telling users they need to avoid 3rd
party formats as though 3rd party is somehow dodgy rather than just
meaning that MS can't manage to write code to support their own format
let alone other organisations.

One thing to bear in mind is the ODF formats were derived from the
original StarOffice formats and spreadsheets in that format worked fine
in StarOffice, and later OpenOffice, for years.

#24

Hi :slight_smile:
Better compatibility with the formats sometimes means using a branch early in it's life-cycle and that sometimes means it might not be 100% as stable as the x.x.4 of the earlier branch.

So it's a balancing act for which we each need to find our own comfort-zone.

Usually whichever you choose is good enough to open almost anything.  It's increasingly rare to manage to find something that doesn't open at all.  It's more a question of how perfect you want it to look.  Usually it looks better in LO than just a different version of MSO from whichever one created it but that's not always true either.  It's all a bit unpredictable with MSO formats.  To some extent that is also true with any format and any program but i tend to find it's mostly MSO formats that suffer most.

The best bet, right now, is to use Doc as an intermediary format.  MS have stopped developing new features for it but might still be doing bug-fixes, maybe.  So it's less likely to create surprises.  DocX keeps popping up with surprises.  Odt is stable because it's developed by a committee and LO complies with that although by default it adds a little extra but again that little extra is well documented.  So, Odt is likely to become the best choice and i tend to use it like that already because all machines in this office already have LibreOffice.  In any other place or for "outsiders" i might use Doc still and i still encourage outsiders to give me Docs (and sometimes that means teaching them where the "Save As..." option is).  However, like i said we all need to find our own sweet-spots and see how that changes as ODF becomes more widely accepted. 
Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

#25

In fact until LO 4+ when they were dropped.
steve

#26

Steve Edmonds wrote:

One thing to bear in mind is the ODF formats were derived from the
original StarOffice formats and spreadsheets in that format worked fine
in StarOffice, and later OpenOffice, for years.

In fact until LO 4+ when they were dropped.

Can they still be read? IIRC, OO 1.3 was the last version that couldn't
write ODF, but it could read them.